An American (lost) in Paris

Notes for next trip: Learn how to say more than “Oui,” and don’t leave the guidebook in the room

PARIS — She hands me the key and tells me, in her charming French accent, that I’ll find my diesel-fueled Renault Mégane with the sunroof in space 89.

“Oui,” I say, so suave, so sophisticated, in my own mind, as I stroll out of the Europcar rental office at Charles de Gaulle International Airport and begin scanning the lot for the vehicle that I shall drive back into Paris proper.

But hitting the “unlock” button on the key does not open the door on the car in space 89. I point and click at a few others nearby and find my rental in space 91.I jump in and look for the ignition but as far as I can tell there isn’t one. That’s when I realize that the rectangular object in my hand is shaped more like a security badge than a car key. I wave down a lot attendant. He’s already laughing at me as he trots over and shows me how the “key” slides into a slot in the console like a debit card into an ATM machine. Then you put your foot on the brake and push the “start/stop” button, he says.

I try it but it doesn’t work. It’s a foreign feeling in a foreign land. The lot attendant is enjoying me. Laughing at me, not with me. I finally figure it out and I am off, trying to decide which highway leads back into Paris before spending two maddening hours driving through one roundabout after another trying to find the hotel I’d been staying at the past five days.

Before my 10-day venture to France earlier this month to celebrate turning the big 5-0 later this summer, I’d been out of the United States three times before — two spring-break trips to Mexico during college in the 1980s, and one walk across the border from Nogales, Ariz., to Nogales, Mexico, in 2006.

Although I had a lovely time in the City of Light and a two-day road trip (thus, the car rental) north to the city of Caen in the Normandy region — near the site of the D-Day landings during World War II — I couldn’t help feeling like Chevy Chase in “National Lampoon’s European Vacation” much of the time.

Sure, I can utter obligatories like bonjour (hello), merci (thanks) and oui (yes), but I do not speak French. Not at all. Not even close.

I did live in New York City for 18 months in the mid-1990s and navigated that metropolis and its vast subway system with relative ease, so this couldn’t be much different, could it? And the French love Americans, right? After all, if it wasn’t for our brave boys storming the beaches that day 68 years ago this month, wouldn’t all of France be speaking German?

All I know is the waiter on our first night there, at a little place called Cafe Pasco in the 7th arrondissement, not far from our hotel near the Eiffel Tower, doesn’t seem to like my choice of pre-dinner beverage.

“Café (coffee)? Before dinner? You mean for after dinner, right?” he responds.

When I confirm that my jet-lagged body and brain want café ASAP, he seems appalled. He rolls his eyes and lets out a “pshaw.”

Wrong way, monsieur

The friend I met in Paris for a week, let’s call her A, lived here for a term when she was in college. So I figure getting around, as long as I’m with her, won’t be a problem. And it isn’t. But the two times A goes off to work on a freelance piece she’s pitched to another American newspaper — and leaves me to navigate the city alone — I get lost.

I’ve been trying to reach Delta Airlines at Charles de Gaulle without luck for a couple of days (you can’t call 1-800 numbers from Europe) to change my return flight so I can head solo to the Normandy region near the end of the trip, and finally decide to just go to the airport and change the flight in person. The RER train is an easy and inexpensive way to get to the airport.

I am fine riding the Metro subway lines to the station where you catch the RER, but when I go down to the platform, I get on the wrong train. Instead of hopping on the RER heading northeast to the airport, I am on a west-bound train heading toward downtown Paris. I am checking the names of the stops on a guide map to see if they match the ones in the booklet. They don’t. When I come to the stop for the La Grande Arche de la Défense, which I know is miles west from the direction I want to go, I quickly get off and wait for an east-bound train.

I am able to make my way back to the RER platform, but give up waiting for the airport-bound train after 45 minutes. It’s taking too long. Defeated for now (I will return to the airport two days later via the RER for the car rental, after reaching a Delta representative in the states via A’s gmail account and finally changing my return flight), I decide to do some sightseeing in Paris’ Latin Quarter, maybe check out the Paris-Sorbonne University. But I miss the correct subway stop and end up on the wrong side of the Seine.

After heading back to the hotel, I decide to stroll a few blocks to the Champ de Mars, the large public park that rolls out like a lawn from the base of the Eiffel Tower, and do some reading. But I leave my guidebook in the room.

This is a mistake. It takes me an hour to find the hotel again, after wandering up and down streets that all look the same. I am able to find my way back by stopping in my tracks, then retracing them back to the park before simply walking back to the hotel via the route I first came.

Watch your wallet

Vita Levina, an aspiring pianist and singer from Lithuania who moonlights as a receptionist at our hotel, the Hotel Eiffel Rive Gauche, says tales are common of Americans getting lost among Paris’ angled and crisscrossing avenues and boulevards.

One couple this spring ducked into the small hotel lobby and inquired about a room, saying they weren’t happy with their current hotel nearby. They made a booking and said they would return the next day. Although their first hotel was only five minutes away, it took them three hours to again find the Hotel Eiffel Rive Gauche, which is tucked far down a skinny side street.

“They were exhausted and sweating” by the time they found the hotel again, Levina says.

Besides easily getting lost in a city with more than 10 million in its greater metropolitan area, falling prey to pickpockets is another concern.

At least once a week, a hotel guest complains of being robbed, Levina says. This, in fact, happens to A while riding the subway. Feeling a tug, and looking down to see that her wallet is missing from her bag, she finds it in the hand of the woman standing next to her and bravely snags it back.

Becky Weaver of suburban Philadelphia knows the feeling. She was staying at the Hotel Eiffel Rive Gauche this spring on her first trip to Paris when someone on the Metro snagged her iPhone and passport out of her cross-body purse when she bent down to get something out of her rolling suitcase.

“I was very upset … I felt like I was trapped in France with no way to get home,” Weaver, a strategic consultant for a Pennsylvania firm that provides technology solutions for educational institutions, says in an e-mail.

After employees at an Apple Store helped her, Weaver was able to get her passport replaced at the U.S. embassy in Paris. “I thoroughly enjoyed Paris,” she says. “I chalk this up to another lifelong learning experience that will also help me to prevent others from being pickpocketed, and if they (are), I know exactly what they need to do to recover. I have to say I did not meet hordes of stereotypical ‘rude’ Parisians. In fact the Parisians I did meet were lovely, and the rest of the people I met were from other countries and also all lovely! I fell in love with this city.”

Still a thrill

Despite my orientation troubles, I too fall in love with Paris.

Climbing the first two flights of stairs on the 1,050-foot Eiffel Tower, then ascending to the top on an elevator lift against a sunset-burnished sky, is a thrill. Seeing the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo at The Musée de Louvre is a thrill. The Arc de Triompe, Notre Dame Cathedral, the gardens of Versailles, visiting Jim Morrison’s grave in Pére Lachise Cemetery, the glorious food and out-of-this-world cafes — all a thrill.

Although I leave one waiter amused when, upon his asking this monsieur if I’d like milk with my café, I respond with: “Si. I mean oui. What country am I in?”

After paying l’addition (the check), we rise from our table and spot our waiter across the restaurant giving us a friendly nod on our way out the door.

“Merci!” I say.

“You should have said ‘Gracias!” A says.